Srebrenica massacre (talk|edit|history|logs|links|archive|watch) (RM) (Discussion with closer)

After many years of watching this article's title go through partisan bickering for move reviews, such that a repeated failure to form a consensus to move, it behooves the project to be able to clearly and coherently articulate to both editors and an interested audience why the title remains Srebrenica massacre instead of Srebrenica genocide. Articles in less contentious areas with contested titles often have FAQs at the top of the talk page that clearly indicates the answer as such, but this article which has had several formal multiple move requests over the years, all to the same proposed new title, [1], [2], [3], as well as several informal move requests going back over 15 years [4] (there have been numerous arguments on the talk page archives over the years in addition [5]) about why the article title is what it is.

Of these requests and discussions, the last satisfactory explanation for the move request failing was given in 2009 [6]; The proponents of this move have made an excellent case that the use of the term "Srebrenica genocide" is growing in use, especially with the recent declarations by various national and international organizations. However, the opponents of this move also have made an excellent case that "Srebrenica genocide", while growing in use, has not yet achieved the status of most commonly used name. 15 years later, this is the exact same argument made by those opposed to the argument. How can something be growing in use for 15 years but somehow never quite reach common name? How can editors make heads or tails of the fact that Wikipedia article regarding the reason that the name of the article about a genocide differs from the name used by national and international organizations is that consensus cannot be formed by a group of editors with minimal or no supervision, flinging accusations of genocide denial back and forth?

I thank Reading Beans for having taken the time to read through the move request and have the courage to put an end to the conversation, as they'd have good reason to suspect the same tenor of conversation as in the move request would come to their talk page, but it is not a satisfactory outcome to simply offer to Feel free to make another RM when due. and not be able to articulate, to a satisfactory degree, anything regarding the number of votes for or against, contextualize the latest of many failed move requests over several years, or, more importantly, offer anything regarding the strength or weakness of these arguments. That this opportunity for a move review comes in tandem with another highly contested article title in a similar topic space motivates this move review all the more. That the level of insight, attention, and conversation which the Gaza genocide move requests have gotten is entire magnitudes of maturity and coherency than what the Srebrenica genocide article gets nowadays is understandable given that one is more topical than another, but there isan opportunity here to finally provide a satisfactory explanation for the article, instead of kicking it down the can for another 15 years. To the best of my knowledge this is the first time someone has submitted this article's numerous unsuccessful move requests for a move review, and if this is the case it is long overdue. 122141510 (talk) 02:27, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've notified those who participated in the requested move about this discussion. 122141510 (talk) 02:47, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak endorse (involved): There certainly were strong opinions expressed in favour of the move proposal, but seemingly motivated as much to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS as by Wikipedia policy & guidelines, producing a larger volume of argumentation than those opposed, and perhaps generating more heat than light. Closure was a difficult judgment call, and another person could have perceived the same discussion as a consensus to move, but I don't see sufficient grounds for overturning a no consensus declaration. The same proposal was a snow close against it at Talk:Srebrenica massacre/Archive 22#Requested move 25 April 2021. Revisiting the question in a couple of years seems reasonable. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 04:09, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  (involved) I object, as I did in the discussion, to the idea that WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS as a motivation would be exclusive to the support side. Some editors saw fit to question the legitimacy or procedure of international organizations in recognizing the genocide. If it's fit to suspect support arguments are doing it to 'correct' Wikipedia, those object arguments which questioned the legitimacy of international organizations recognizing the genocide may see objecting to the move request as an opportunity to 'correct' the international consensus. 122141510 (talk) 05:50, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I have not noticed anyone in the RM discussion trying to minimize the gravity of the event or anyone who "questioned the legitimacy [or procedure] of international organizations recognizing the genocide". The article about The Holocaust uses the word 'genocide' just once in its lead section. The Darfur genocide article uses it twice (one of which is the opening sentence's repetition of the article's title). The Armenian genocide article uses it four times. This article uses the word nine times in its lead section. I have not noticed anyone trying to remove the word or say the word does not apply and should not be used in the article. I have not noticed anyone in the RM discussion trying to say that the term is not accurate in the way it was applied in organizational declaration(s). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:56, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  One of the opposers repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the UN and/or its processes, and another indicated that they questioned the "moral authority of UN pronouncements in this area". 122141510 (talk) 00:45, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Reclose or relist (uninvolved). Unless I'm missing something, the closer does not appear to have given an explanation for their conclusion. I'd be open to ReadingBeans themselves re-closing this with a 4-5 paragraph explanation. That length is warranted given the variety of arguments and sources presented. Even if the result is the same such a close would be incredibly useful for future move discussions.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 04:53, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  (involved) To avoid any confusion, the full explanation as provided by closer is here Talk:Srebrenica_massacre#Requested_move_2_June_2024. My submission above might give an incorrect impression that the closure explanation was only 8 words long – it's actually 54 words, but my contention is effectively what you've suggested. 122141510 (talk) 05:40, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak endorse (uninvolved). While I agree that the closer's decision could have been more detailed, I suspect that a more careful and detailed closing judgement would nevertheless arrive at the same conclusion. I count 8 supporting and 9 opposing votes, and I too get the impression that to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS motivated supporters to a considerable degree. In such a case, a declaration that they nevertheless had the better arguments would look suspiciously like a WP:Supervote. A relist seems pointless, as the RM was open for almost two months – surely long enough to gather qualified input. Gawaon (talk) 05:23, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (involved). Very clear no consensus. The close was entirely correct. It looks like the proposer just wants to re-argue the case here and that's not what MR is for. The debate has been going on for far too long already. I also agree that most supporters seem to have been motivated by WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS and that's not what Wikipedia is about. -- Necrothesp (talk) 07:31, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy overturn to a close with a summary(involved, I argued for the move). Per VR. There is zero explanation in the close. The main policy discussed was COMMONNAME, but also PRECISION. Closers are required to give some explanation for the decision, some rationale, Tom B (talk) 09:06, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overturn to what? You can't possibly argue that this debate resulted in a consensus to move. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:47, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes I can argue that closes should be overturned if they include zero rationale or summary. I argue there is consensus to move based on COMMONNAME and PRECISION, but the closer doesn't mention any argument or policy, Tom B (talk) 10:13, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    So, are you arguing that it should be overturned to a move or not a move? Because it's a clear no consensus, whatever rationale was supplied by the closer. There's no way in hell there was a consensus to move the article. And if there's no consensus to move then an article stays where it is. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:46, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Several of us, including Joe, Szmenderowiecki, myself are arguing it should have a rationale regardless of what the consensus is. A surprising number of editors are endorsing a close that has no rationale, Tom B (talk) 14:54, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm wonder what is the mechanism (if any) by which a panel of multiple editors might agree to reclose and certify the rationale, such as was done here [7]? I think there's some hesitation in being the person tasked with closing contentious articles in this topic area – there is either a policy or more likely an essay I haven't been able to find that advises uninvolved editors to avoid this topic space lest they bear the brunt of one or more sides of the contentious editors in this area. (I haven't been able to find it but I swear it exists in mainspace. It also speaks about the idea of just letting editors 'tire themselves out. Point being, I am of the impression uninvolved editors are consciously avoiding any level of involvement this topic area.) The immediate effect would be to provides more confidence in the rationale for the closure, and dilutes the amount of grief any one closer might get. 122141510 (talk) 19:23, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (uninvolved): As much as I'd like for things to be called what they are, Wikipedia has a policy called WP:COMMONNAME. WP:COMMONNAME as a policy makes sense, because people should be able to more easily find the things with the names that they are more likely to give them. While the usage of "Srebrenica genocide" may have increased it was clear from discussion that it has not clearly overtaken "Srebrenica massacre" in usage and was equal at best. Therefore I can't see how the closer could have arrived at any other conclusion, than no consensus, given the strengths of the arguments and the evidence presented for their support. TarnishedPath^talk 10:19, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  COMMONNAME is one of 5 criteria for titles, the closer could have looked at the other criteria discussed and evidence provided e.g. on PRECISION. We don't know what policies the closer applied as there is no rationale, no mention of any policy. I'm surprised uninvolved editors are endorsing a close with no summary, no rationale, no mention of any policy e.g. COMMONNAME, PRECISION? Tom B (talk) 10:37, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes the closing statement wasn't flash hot. However, even if someone recloses with a more detailed rationale I can't see the outcome changing from no consensus. TarnishedPath^talk 04:29, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  thanks, i can see the outcome changing if all 5 criteria were applied, per the policy on titles. Here there are 2 COMMONnames so it particularly makes sense to look at other criteria e.g. PRECISION, Tom B (talk) 17:25, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• I haven't read through through the discussion yet but at the least this is a very poor closing statement. It just states the outcome with zero supporting reasoning—no summary of the arguments, nothing, not even a headcount—and unnecessarily talks down the participants ("bricks of !votes", "feel free to make another RM"). The closer couldn't even be bothered to spell out their words properly ("thru"). A formal close serves two purposes: to save others having to read through the whole discussion by summarising the points of consensus, and to lend weight to the outcome by reassuring participants that their arguments have been considered, even if their preferred outcome didn't happen. Both are especially important in lengthy and contentious discussions like this one. Since this close offers no information and actively antagonises the participants it's worse than no close at all, and I'm tempted to say it should be overturned on that basis alone. – Joe (talk) 11:21, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  On reflection, yes, that's enough for this close not to stand. So reclose by someone willing to write a proper closing statement. – Joe (talk) 15:02, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I made a point that the term massacre is controversial and that we cannot have a controversial term favored over the other non controversial term on the grounds of COMMON name. I also made a point that COMMON name process is flawed.That wasn't addressed at all. Trimpops2 (talk) 11:49, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  They're both controversial, rather your argument is privileging one form of "controversial" ("massacre" minimises severity) as being right and the other ("genocide" overstates severity) as being wrong ("denial", see also comment by Jessintime below). If most sources call it a "genocide" then cool, it's a reason to have that be the title, but you can't then go woke on whether people are allowed to say "massacre". Did the UN declare "massacre" harmful? Do most sources care? Is there a "denialist" movement directed at the consensus that "massacre" is harmful? Apologies if this is offtopic for I do endorse having a summary of arguments in the talk page per current consensus (as above). FMasic (talk) 23:51, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They are not both controversial. This is not the place to have discussions from the talk page, but suffice to say that jo one made a point that genocide is a controversial term, including you. I've made several other points apart from this 2 I have mentioned here. and I would like to have an explanation in how they were considered when establishing the consensus. Trimpops2 (talk) 01:46, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Establishing which consensus? There was no consensus, as the closer clearly enough indicated (even though I agree that their statement could and should have been more detailed and better explained). Gawaon (talk) 05:40, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What's your figuring on that? When I subtract those arguments I find without merit, there is a consensus to move on the basis of WP:TITLE criteria. I couldn't have closed the request both because I was involved and because a contentious article would've been a poor choice for someone to do their first ever move request close on. 122141510 (talk) 15:22, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Reclose If the discussion outcome were obvious, I would have had no problem whatsoever with a short closure. In more controversial discussions like this one, I need to understand the motives of the closer for me to see if the closure was within editorial discretion and to rebut any assumptions that the closer may have made. However, here there's basically nothing except for the result. This isn't good enough. I think the closer should provide a reasonably detailed rationale so that we are sure that the closure was based on correct assumptions.

If the closer expands his closure with a rationale, I may reconsider. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 14:30, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (uninvolved). Notwithstanding the fact that the closer should have offered a better explanation, the no-consensus close was correct. Evidence introduced by a proponent of the move showed each term is used equally and, if anything, massacre remains the common name. And quite frankly the idea that calling something a massacre and not a genocide is denying that event happened -- as proponents did throughout the discussion -- is insulting. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 19:59, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. A post closure comment on the talk page and some of the comments above make me wonder if a lot of the problem was an unsophisticated rationale as provided by the request submitter – "per the UN using the term", in effect – so some oppose arguments were formulated as little more than attacks on the UN's procedure and/or moral authority, ignoring or otherwise sidestepping the attempt to move the conversation to supporting or opposing the move on the basis of Wikipedia guidelines and policy. If the move request is relisted it might need to be done so with some modification to the submitter rationale[?]; if reclosed the explanation should clearly explain whether those arguments were given weight and if so why. 122141510 (talk) 00:56, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (involved, I argued against the move): I would have welcomed a more detailed rationale and an admin closure, but perfectly understand why neither happened. The closer has done well if they have waded through the oceans of specious and bad-faith argumentation. As others have argued above, the fundamental issue centred on COMMONNAME. The little evidence provided (mainly by a proponent of the move), is well summarised as While the usage of "Srebrenica genocide" may have increased it was clear from discussion that it has not clearly overtaken "Srebrenica massacre". And long and middle-term usage still shows a strong preference for 'massacre'. I cannot see how any close other than 'no consensus for move' could have been arrived at. I thank those editors above who note that neither the article itself, nor editors arguing against the move, were implicitly or explicitly minimising the seriousness of the crimes committed at Srebrenica. It is tiresome, offensive and tediously predictable to be repeatedly accused of giving comfort to historical revisionists, Serb apologists or genocide deniers. Pincrete (talk) 19:11, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse. < uninvolved > Again we see that "no consensus" is often a tough closure. Per above editors, this time it is correct, reasonable and in line with closing instructions at WP:RMCI. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 21:12, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  That the close is difficult to make does not mean reader should have a rough time understanding why it was closed. 122141510 (talk) 16:17, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse The closer's only error was not doing a better job with elaborating why this no consensus was a no consensus. Since the resolution was recent, and since Wikipedia is conservative in these regards, I would not be surprised if the next move discussion in six months to a year finds a consensus. But those opposing have valid arguments and their opinions cannot be easily discarded. SportingFlyer T·C 18:16, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gaza genocide (talk|edit|history|logs|links|archive|watch) (RM) (Discussion with closer) and (Post move discussion)

On 3 May 2024 there was a requested move from "Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza" and it was moved to "Gaza genocide". Three options were available to vote for the new article title: "Gaza genocide question", "Gaza genocide accusation" and "Gaza genocide". While the third option had the plurality of the votes, options 1 and 2 had a majority combined, and are basically the same thing just put into two different titles. I want to hear comments on if the move was applied too soon and if there is a clear consensus to call it Gaza genocide. User:Selfstudier wrote "If you want to dispute the current article title, which has consensus, Move Review is the place, where I note no-one has to date contested the recent move". [8] I am thus following his suggestion to ask for further review.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 12:22, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (uninvolved). This move review is not at all timely. I get that people have lives, but almost three weeks after the RM was closed is getting a bit long in the tooth. That aside, consensus is not determined by a blind head count and the closer clearly articulated why consensus was to be found with option 3 given the detailed source analyses which were provided in support of option 3. TarnishedPath^talk 13:02, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: 3E1I5S8B9RF7, did you discuss your concerns with the closer before opening this move review? The link you provided goes to their close of the RfC, not to any discussion you have had with them about their close. --Pinchme123 (talk) 04:33, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  They didn't. But another use did raise the same misunderstanding about the counts at User talk:Joe Roe#Genocide close. In short you can't just add up the number of supports for 1 and 2 because many people supported more than one option. If you count the number of participants who supported option 3 against the number of participants who did not support it, there's a majority in favour of option 3. – Joe (talk) 06:28, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I didn't, but other users did. There were discussions and discussions, but it was always the same outcome: those who wanted a recount / reconsideration of the title name and those who refused another review because they thought it was a settled consensus.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 16:28, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It is a settled consensus currently, subject to this move review. Selfstudier (talk) 16:32, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Pinchme123, there was a discussion here. Alaexis_¿question? 08:54, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn (uninvolved). According to my own recount, 29 editors preferred Option 1 or 2 (or both), 25 28 preferred Option 3 [figure corrected after another recount]. Considering that 1/2 were clearly closely related (and most editors saw this), this numerical outcome indicates that "one of them" would likely have been the most appropriate outcome. At least the closer should have explained why they saw a consensus for Option 3 despite it being endorsed by only a minority of editors, but they didn't. The closer also showed biased by downweighting arguments of "there is no Gaza genocide" as "not policy-based", while apparently accepting arguments of "yes, it's a genocide and should be called such" (widely made by those in favour of Option 3) as policy-biased. Gawaon (talk) 07:00, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  My count was 32 for option 3 versus 27 for option 1 or 2 – a majority. It's normal for different editors to come to counts that differ by a head or two (sometimes you lose a !vote in a thread, etc.) but I don't know how to explain such a large discrepancy. – Joe (talk) 07:17, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  OK, I did miscount a little bit too – looks like I overlooked a few Option 3 votes. Let's try again.

  Counting only those who voted under Talk:Gaza genocide/Archive 2 § Three options, I count for Option 1 or 2: Alaexis, Alalch E., AndyBloch, Animal lover 666, BilledMammal, Bondegezou, Cdjp1, CoffeeCrumbs, Cremastra, Crossroads, Czello, Eladkarmel, FortunateSons, HaOfa, Hogo-2020, Howardcorn33, Kowal2701, Let'srun, Me Da Wikipedian, Metropolitan90, My very best wishes, NoonIcarus, Oleg Y., Paul Vaurie, Some1, TimeEngineer, Vegan416, xDanielx (opposed Option 3, which can be considered implicit support for 1 or 2), Zanahary – total: 29 editors.

  For Option 3: BluePenguin18, Brusquedandelion, Chaotic Enby, CNC, David A, Dreameditsbrooklyn, FunLater, Huldra, Iazyges, Iskandar323, Ïvana, kashmīrī, KetchupSalt, Kinsio, Levivich, MarkiPoli, M.Bitton, Nishidani, PBZE, Personisinsterest, Rainsage, SKAG123, Skitash, Smallangryplanet, Stephan rostie, The Great Mule of Eupatoria, Trilletrollet, Vice regent – total: 28 editors.

  Three editors (blindlynx, Selfstudier, Vinegarymass911) voted for option 1/2 or 3, without expressing a clear preference for either, so I didn't include them in either count.

  Now it's almost a tie, but still not a majority for Option 3. A no consensus decision might have been more appropriate. In any case, the closing decision didn't take proper consideration of how close the vote count really was. Gawaon (talk) 08:54, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:NOTAVOTE, the sourcing played a large part in this. Selfstudier (talk) 16:34, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The closer clearly articulated why they saw consensus with option 3, that being the detailed source analyses which were provided in support of that option, amongst other considerations. TarnishedPath^talk 09:47, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (uninvolved) The discussion lasted for about two months, from 3 May 2024 to 2 July 2024. Particularly interesting on the issue of sourcing is Levivich initially arguing for Option 1, but after looking at the sources, switching to Option 3. The arguments presented in the RM for Options 1/2 do not provide significant numbers of genocide scholars' sources arguing against genocide occurring. Joe Roe's closing summary accurately provides a rough consensus based on policy – WP:RS – rather than vote counting, and is fair in stating that the sourcing argument was contested but not convincingly rebutted. Boud (talk) 00:22, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I'm not sure I agree with the closer's claim that "the arguments in favour of this title generally had a stronger grounding in reliable sources", see the thread that followed FortunateSons's !vote in the original discussion in which many sources were presented which did not support the option chosen by the closer. Alaexis_¿question? 09:22, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  We have further collected opinions from relevant experts in the below template. You can see over time a shift to sources with heavier weight and more detailed opinions provided explaining the assessment of the assault as genocide.

-- Cdjp1 (talk) 20:03, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are two problems with this list. First, it includes opinions of scholars who work in completely unrelated areas (Professor of linguistics, Professor of computer science, Professor of political science, Professor of information theory, etc.). The second problem is that I don't see any of the sources listed in u:FortunateSons's thread which makes me doubt that the list is in fact representative of the range of experts' opinion. Alaexis_¿question? 09:47, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am confused then as to what list you refer, as this list was started by @FortunateSons: with an exact copy of their list, and none of their entries have been removed. As to specialisms, you assume that the individuals are not relevant based on the field they are located in, if you click through the links provided in the list you can see what their research focuses are and the work they've published, and you'll find they have relevance. This is not to say they should be considered with as much weight as others, just as how the small comments by some individuals in the popular press should not be considered with as much weight as the peer reviewed papers published in the Journal of Genocide Research. --Cdjp1 (talk) 15:05, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This list does (or at least should, I only spot-checked them) include the people I originally included. I must admit that I mostly disengaged from the list due to being incredibly busy, so at least the German part is mostly out of date, unless others have contributed those. There have been some discussions on scope and content in the past (see it’s talk page), and you (and everyone else) is very welcome to contribute.

While the journal is a generally reliable source, we should be mindful that it has certain slant, something one should probably be aware of.[1], (see also: it’s article on wiki) FortunateSons (talk) 15:43, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Charny once again arguing that any comparative analysis of other genocides with the Holocaust is wrong and bad, unless it's Charny himself doing it. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 15:59, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (involved). Nothing out of ordinary here, since this is how consensus is normally established on Wikipedia. Consensus is not unanimity. When a group of editors presents good, policy-based arguments and another group makes weaker arguments, then it's routinely determined that there's a consensus for the stronger option. Which happened here, too. — kashmīrī ^TALK 16:14, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn (uninvolved). The move relies on the notion that non-neutral titles may be used if the specific formulation is widely used by reliable sources and so readers will more likely recognise it through this title. But there are three problems with it.

1. The query of the sources does not allow me to reach this conclusion. The table includes a lot of sources coming from experts not within the field of genocide study, international law, Israel-Palestine conflict, historians or the like. Among those scholars who are relevant, there are a lot (mostly of Jewish roots or origins, but a couple non-Jewish as well) who firmly state this is not a case of genocide or even that it is counter-genocidal, or alternatively that what they are doing is awful but there is no proof this is genocide (because proving genocide per the Genocide Convention is hell of a difficult task).
   • A very good source here is a Brookings poll that says A majority of Middle East scholars see Israeli motives in Gaza to be about forcing Palestinians out [57%]", "A third of scholars see Israel's military actions in Gaza as 'genocide' [34%]", 41% see it as "major war crimes akin to genocide". But 57% is not a wide majority, and war crimes are a lesser crime than genocide and require a lower standard of proof (though they are still heinous, and whether we call the crimes genocide or war crimes doesn't help suffering Palestinians).
   • To be clear, there are excellent sources here that assert that Israel commits genocide or is on the verge of doing it (e.g. UN special rapporteurs report from this month), but I don't see wide consensus that genocide is underway. "War crimes" is more likely to have wide consensus here than genocide, but that's not what was discussed here, so I can't force a change to this title. In other words, a legitimate debate is ongoing and Wikipedia should not take a side.
2. The second problem stems from the principle that we should not state opinions, or seriously contested assertions, as fact. A statement that "Israel is committing genocide" may even be an assertion of fact, but it is seriously contested, as shown above. And even when you assume this, you can't just nebulously say "Israel", because it's specific people who execute its policy and would arguably be perpetrators of the crime (e.g. Netanyahu, Gallant, other senior IDF/govt officials). But WP:BLPCRIME would bar us calling them génocidaires without a court of law having secured a conviction. So far we have an ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu and Gallant, but an arrest warrant is not a conviction (in the same vein, Putin and Lvova-Belova cannot be accused in Wikipedia voice of forcibly abducting Ukrainian children even when such government-sponsored cases are well documented and the ICC posts arrest warrants on their asses for that reason).
   • Any reasonable reader would imply from the title that Wikipedia says Israeli officials are committing genocide in Gaza, when no court has yet said it and, even if we allow an exception for cases when researchers almost unanimously say this is genocide, this is not it. It is also not necessarily how the war in Gaza, and Israel's actions towards Palestianian civilians, is widely known among readers. Such accusations are known, but widely known as fact? Nah-ah. Therefore, I will be not the least bit surprised if readers start to flock here to accuse us of presenting the pro-Palestinian rhetoric as fact.
3. The third problem is that the policy of neutral point of view may not be annulled by consensus. Even if 90% of people had voted to move towards Gaza genocide, the first two points would prevent such a move. Here it's barely a majority, which makes the case for the move even weaker.

Joe Roe tried hard, and he deserves credit for trying, but I strongly disagree with his conclusions, given available evidence. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 14:19, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly agree that the NPOV can't be dismissed by a local consensus, but there was no agreement here on what the NPOV title was. Those in favour of options 1 or 2 argued that "allegation" "question" or "accusation" was NPOV and "genocide" was POV (because not all sources say that there is a genocide). Those in favour of option 3 argued that "genocide" was NPOV and "allegation" "question" or "accusation" (per WP:ALLEGED). As a closer I don't think it's my place to decide which of two policy-based arguments are correct when there is no consensus amongst participants on that point. Instead, I looked for consensus in the other strands of the discussion, and found one on the question of usage in reliable sources/WP:COMMONNAME.

Your other two points seem to be criticisms of the reasoning and source analysis of the participants, rather than of the close? – Joe (talk) 15:10, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ALLEGED is clear that alleged and accused are appropriate when wrongdoing is asserted but undetermined, such as with people awaiting or undergoing a criminal trial, which is what we have in both ICJ and ICC right now. I think you should have pointed to this quote in the guideline. And even then guidelines cannot override a core policy. As for WP:COMMONNAME, I explained myself below.

To be clear, you did a hard job, and you are explaining yourself very reasonably, which I appreciate deeply. I believe you are doing a great job. It's that I would have made a different closure and I disagree with you, but that's no offense from me. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:42, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that if I'd tried to determine that this is a situation where "wrongdoing is asserted but undetermined" (i.e. subject to WP:ALLEGED), or more broadly decide which title is favoured by NPOV, it would have been a supervote not a close. But of course I take no offence that you disagree. – Joe (talk) 07:41, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Joe, thanks for all the work you do here. Option 1 was 'question' rather than 'allegation'? Tom B (talk) 09:15, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, corrected. – Joe (talk) 10:43, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On your comment on the list of sources, if you trim the list to just genocide scholars, firstly you'll find the majority support the assessment that this is in fact a case of genocide, secondly you'll find a chunk of those who state this is not genocide do so using the UN convention which is in contradiction to their own previous work where they use what they consider to be better frameworks to determining if something is genocide (this latter point you touch on yourself). So one must ask why is Gaza a special case for them to use a framework they consider deficient? There is then also the consideration of weight of where various scholars are publishing the opinions, as once again if we look at those that are being put through review to be published in academic articles, we find once again a majority appear in declaring this a case of genocide. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 16:05, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It may very well be that the researchers apply double standards or are hypocritical, but we should not be the ones calling the shots. You may provide scholarly commentary/papers of a similar level of proof that show those who oppose the genocide label are in fact inconsistent.

Now the purpose of POVNAMING is to say that when the choice comes between neutral but obscure title and widely used but possibly non-neutral title, we should use the latter. This is made, among other reasons, to make sure that readers may find titles under commonly recognised names. I don't see polls suggesting the term "Gaza genocide" or support for that notion is high enough to say that the first thing people will think when speaking of Gaza is "genocide". My assessment is that the sources presented do not demonstrate enough consensus to say that we can ignore the concern about article title neutrality (and when saying "we", speak for yourself - I explained why I don't believe the sourcing is good enough). Szmenderowiecki (talk) 18:38, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"We" stands as it is a numeric assessment of the reality of the sources, you can choose to disregard it. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 14:37, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the sourcing is sufficient, and it is, then that's enough. All the rest is equivocation. Selfstudier (talk) 14:44, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is an RM vote, not an MR vote. #1 and #2 are reasons why it should/should not be moved. As for #3, well, it's up to the RM voters to decide whether a title is or is not in line with WP:NPOVTITLE. Levivich (talk) 17:14, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, but I guess I know what I should assess in this discussion, and yes, I read correctly, it's MR nor RM.

#1 responds to the determination that "the arguments in favour of this title [Gaza genocide] generally had a stronger grounding in reliable sources". I don't really see it. Yes, there are great sources that say it is, and many others suggesting a controversy about this naming still exists. What the closer did is dismissed the latter, and that was improper on the closer's part.

#2 states the policies that inevitably will be implicated once the article was renamed, and which the closer did not take into account. Even if no other person has raised the argument, the closer's job is not only to evaluate consensus but to avoid closures that will obviously clash with other clearly stated policies, and to discard arguments that violate or will lead to violation of other policies (which the closer is explicitly allowed, and, I dare to say, obliged to do).

As for #3, that's where I'll have to disagree. The whole point of setting NPOV as a core policy is to prevent RM voters, or any voters, to override the policy by consensus, which is what this closure effectively does, and I believe that the closer did not take this into account, either.

Responding to your comment that "genocide" does not mean "a violation of the Genocide Convention".

First, the article structure still doesn't align with the title, and I don't know whether it's intentional, but, adopting your idea that editors are to decide what is NPOVTITLE (and NPOV content, by extension), you'd need a couple of things changed. First, the lead sentence "Israel has been accused by ... of carrying out a genocide" should be "Israel is committing genocide" (cf. The Holocaust - The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews...); then section titles should be "Alleged genocidal intent and genocidal rhetoric" and "Alleged genocidal actions". That's if you want to be consistent. I guess you'd also need to have this included into List of genocides. Good luck doing this all.

Second, genocide is a crime and anything crime-related should fall under WP:BLPCRIME, and you aren't arguing that Netanyahu or Gallant should be called a "leader of the Gaza genocide campaign" in Wikivoice, are you? A lot of genocides were not prosecuted by ICC/ICJ/ad hoc tribunals, including all those before WWII, but here we have a high-profile case that is under consideration in the International Criminal Court (arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant) and the International Court of Justice (South Africa v. Israel), and both apply the Genocide Convention. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:33, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (involved). Some comments here appear to be an attempt to rerun the discussion, which already ran for an extended period of time. Closer identified superior sourcing in support of the title (that also included sourcing suggesting there was a consensus on the matter among relevant experts).Selfstudier (talk) 16:01, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment (uninvolved), I had drafted a close at [9]. It recommended moving to option 1 per WP:ACD, then having another rfc, as editors provided reliable sources that an International Court of Justice case is ongoing, and WP should wait for the ICJ to decide, rather than editors. If there was an ongoing court case about whether Gerry was murdered or manslaughtered by Idris, and WP had two articles, one on the case 'State vs Idris' and one on the topic of 'Gerry murder', it would damage WP's reputation. Are there negative consequences to WP's reputation of no qualification of genocide, ahead of the verdict or does it just describe a topic without taking sides? Potentially a better way to deal with this would be to keep the move and start another RFC if editors feel the current unqualified title is damaging WP's reputation for neutrality, Tom B (talk) 17:01, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  "Genocide" does not mean "a violation of the Genocide Convention." Most genocides (almost all) have not been adjudicated as violations of the Convention, but are nevertheless considered genocides by genocide studies scholars. Levivich (talk) 17:12, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  But that's partly because the 1951 convention didn't exist at the time of many genocides e.g. Libyan genocide in the 1920s. Even since 1951 there has often been no prospect of a court case. Here we have an ongoing court case where living people are being accused of not just war crimes or crimes against humanity, but genocide like the Holocaust. Why have a court, a legal system if we only need scholars? Tom B (talk) 09:56, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  "Genocide" does

  not mean "a violation of the Genocide Convention," even after the Convention was created in 1951, up to today, because "genocide" has multiple, overlapping definitions, and the Convention's definition is just one of them. The consensus of genocide studies scholars decides (for WP:RS/WP:NPOV purposes) what is and what is not a "genocide." The ICJ decides what is and what is not a violation of the Genocide Convention. Even since 1951 there has often been no prospect of a court case. Exactly, and that's why genocode studies scholars do not depend on the ICJ to determine what is a genocide; they make their own determination. Per WP:RS and WP:NPOV, we follow the scholarship, not the courts. Why have a court, a legal system if we only need scholars? The purpose of a court is to prosecute criminals. The purpose of scholars is to study something. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to summarize reliable secondary sources, such as genocide scholars' works, not to repeat what a court says. It's not like the ICJ is the only RS out there, nor does it trump scholars. A violation of the Genocide Convention isn't like a murder trial, but even still, Wikipedia will call something a murder even if courts have not convicted anyone of murder, when the RSes call it murder. Same with genocide: we refer to something as genocide when the RSes do, regardless of what the ICJ decides, and that is exactly because scholars call many things "genocide" that the ICJ never ruled upon. International law is not really similar to domestic law in this way--ICJ case isn't like any old murder trial. Levivich (talk) 12:20, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  thanks, "Wikipedia will call something a murder even if courts have not convicted anyone of murder", have you one example pls? My understanding was there wasn't clear consensus among sources that Israel's leaders have committed genocide, rather than crimes again humanity, and therefore it would be best for WP to wait for the court. But you're saying there's clear consensus those living people have committed genocide, so there's negligible risk to BLP or WP's reputation, Tom B (talk) 19:01, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Murder of Tupac Shakur. But you're saying there's clear consensus those living people have committed genocide, so there's negligible risk to BLP or WP's reputation I don't think I've ever said anything even close to that. I'm saying the fact that the ICJ hasn't convicted anyone of genocide yet is not a reason to overturn this close. Levivich (talk) 19:10, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  A good example, but there's also a good reason: the murderer of the rapper is not covered by BLP as he was himself murdered (just like in Lee Harvey Oswald's case, we state that he was JFK's assassin even though no court said he was one, as no court is quick enough to convict anyone in two days). This is why we don't have the BLP limitation. Here all the alleged perpetrators are living people.

  Also, I have to concur with Tom B's point, because it's a logical extension of that argument, even if no one ever said it out loud. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:52, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  thank you, nearly all sources agree Tupac was murdered. If nearly all sources agree there's no question a group of living Jews are guilty of genocide rather than war crimes, and WP editors are above the courts, then there's no risk to WP's reputation, Tom B (talk) 13:15, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  You're both still arguing the RM (what the title should be) instead of the MR (whether consensus was read correctly), and I'm not sure WP:BLPGROUP even applies to entire nations, militaries, or governments. Anyway, most participants agreed the title "Gaza genocide" doesn't accuse any specified person or group of committing genocide in violation of BLP. There is no "it must be X because of [ICJ/BLP]" rule that applies here. This RM did not have only one possible outcome, and I don't think arguing it did will convince anyone. Levivich (talk) 13:29, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  There were 3 possible outcomes: the lengthy status quo which no one agreed with, thank goodness that's gone; or acknowledge there is a question over whether genocide is happening, like Holodomor genocide question, or the outcome that happened: a concise title which suggests WP believes there is no question a genocide has been committed rather than war crimes, otherwise it would have put more words in the title, like it has with other articles. No one has argued there was only possible outcome, why do you think that? There is a sad irony on this move review page in that multiple courts found a genocide was committed in Srebrenica due to the intent behind the killings, but the move request for that article to genocide was denied with no rationale. Sad times, Tom B (talk) 17:52, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse. < uninvolved > This closure was in line with the closing instructions per above comments. It was a very tough, good and reasonable outcome and so should be endorsed. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 16:55, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (uninvolved): A tough close, but consensus was assessed appropriately. There doesn't have to be a near-unanimous decision — nothing would ever be closed if that was the case. It ran for two months. People had more than enough time to add their comments. There will always be objections to difficult closes, which is why I am happy some people are willing to consider them. C F A 💬 16:39, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (uninvolved) That was a very well reasoned close on a contentious topic that was always going to wind up here. I don't really have anything else to add. SportingFlyer T·C 18:22, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Côte d'Ivoire (talk|edit|history|logs|links|archive|watch) (RM) (Discussion with closer) and also (additional Discussion with closer)

This was either a close for Ivory Coast or perhaps no-consensus. Red Slash based everything on ngrams as opposed to other argument content. ngrams were shown to be inefficient compared with so many major sources still using Ivory Coast. Google trends has Ivory Coast way ahead, and even that source is limiting. I've never seen ngrams used exclusively as a reason to close an RM. Past discussion have had the same ngram arguments and been quashed. Why this one RM and it's moved? I edit a lot of tennis articles and if we used ngrams to this extent all our foreign players and locations would be at different titles (titles Wikipedia forces us to use often get 0% ngrams vs 100% something else). Plus this was closed the day three more people placed their opinions... it was very active the day it closed. I'm sure the closer was sincere here, but it was just a bad close. Even the person who opened the RM thinks it was a bad close. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:29, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (uninvolved). Good turnout, open long enough, all processes conducted properly, policies adhered to and evidence all stacked up in one direction. Good close. - SchroCat (talk) 06:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Relist (uninvolved) The close correctly discards a couple of the oppose !votes, but the first point makes clear that the closer unilaterally decided that ngrams (the main argument for the move) outweighs the fact that Fyunck and even :Erp's support !vote show major news organisations still use Ivory Coast with considerable frequency, or agree that it is the common name (:Erp's UK government comment). Given this is a fairly major change, I think the discussion is closer to a no consensus than a move even with a slight support majority when downweighting a couple of the oppose !votes, but I think the only really strong votes in the entire discussion were Fyunck's and :Erp's (and Kowal2701's listing of sources which use the current name). Calling these strong doesn't mean all of the other votes need to be discredited, but those were the only comments which tried to actually make a showing of what is commonly used beyond ngrams. I think no consensus would have been a better close, I think the move is probably technically correct and there's a little more support for the move after weighting, but that relisting for another week would be the best option. SportingFlyer T·C 13:44, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Just noting I'm in favour of a relist because the result is in fact the correct one, looking at the evidence I believe Côte d'Ivoire is used more often than Ivory Coast in English. Relisting would simply allow for better arguments not related to n-grams. SportingFlyer T·C 16:44, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn to no consensus (mostly uninvolved, although I did apparently support the Ivory Coast name in a 2011 RM). Per SportingFlyer above, and the points I made to the closer on the article talk page, I think this close amounts to a good faith WP:SUPERVOTE, where the closer is reaching a conclusion not supported by the arguments made. The vote count was split, which means by default it's going to close as no consensus, unless one side or the other really makes significantly better points in policy or evidence. Here, I just didn't see that. There's a slight lead for the French name on ngrams, but it was clearly shown by opponents that media sources still heavily use the English name. Ngrams are useful certainly and I often regard them as the gold Standard for source analysis, but when ample evidence from alternative sources is presented, the ngrams cease to be the only game in town. In short, the supporters did no present a case so watertight that the opposes were nullified, and no consensus is the only conclusion one can reach from this debate.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Relist (uninvolved) and turn Red Slash's close into a !vote, or just overturn as no consensus. I agree with Amakuru that this looks like a good faith WP:SUPERVOTE, and the closer was incorrect in discarding all evidence of common usage other than ngrams. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 21:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse as closer. I definitely didn't supervote--I would personally prefer Ivory Coast. Listen, in any decent contested request like this, you're going to have lots of evidence on either side. But that's literally why we have aggregators like ngrams. Of course tons of RS use Ivory Coast. But more RS use Cote d'Ivoire. With that said, I stand behind this close 100%; no compelling arguments in favor of Ivory Coast were presented at all other than the arguments claiming that Ivory Coast is the most common name in English, and those arguments are founded in nonreality. Red Slash 05:03, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  (involved) Where do you get "more RS use Cote d'Ivoire"? More books that google has use Côte d'Ivoire... that's it! Trending on Google has Ivory Coast landslide way ahead in the US and in the UK. India is also an English-speaking mountain-like 5 year pattern in favor of Ivory Coast. Google is only one tool and you seem be treating it as a godsend, and that's not right. That's not the way Wikipedia is supposed to work. This was no consensus to move. And think of something else... I would bet that many people listed with an article at Wikipedia with a diacritic in their spelling are crushed by the standard English spelling in Google ngrams like Grand Slam champion Goran Ivanišević. Some like 100% to 0% like Wimbledon champion Jelena Janković. We aren't even allowed to use the standard English spelling here at Wikipedia for these people. Per your ngram affinity they should all be changed. So google ngrams are one tool, google trends are another tool, newspapers are another tool, tv/radio is another tool, etc... Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:37, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  While I support a relist I'd overturn the discussion based just on that response alone, as it's absolutely clear that there was evidence presented that Ivory Coast is still continually used by major news orgs. Whether it's enough evidence to support a move is a different question, but it's now obvious the close was clearly erroneous. SportingFlyer T·C 14:12, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Ngrams is only an aggregator for books, and its corpus completely ignores things like media usage, web usage, and scholarly usage. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 01:41, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn (to no consensus). (Uninvolved) I do not read a consensus. The first fault is a too brief nomination, given the long tortuous history of title debate for this article. The nomination did not present enough data,a Dan did not summarise the history of the same discussion. Participants presented data, but it’s a mess, hard to follow, and strong points are being made by both sides disjointedly. The close is argued, but the closers arguments are the closers opinions are are not reflecting the discussion, as as such the close is a Supervote. Red Slash should take to !voting more in contested discussions instead of bold closing.
  I recommend a careful, thorough, fresh nomination, with a logical presentation of the known data and arguments and a summary of the many preceding discussions. SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn (to no consensus) as involved move review nominator. Per listing and in answer to closer above. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:42, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (involved), as correct on policy. This is clearly one of those discussions where feelings are so strongly locked in on opposing sides that it is impossible to close it at all, with any outcome, without some participants being unhappy and initiating a move review. So, here we are. I salute those discussion closers who are willing to close these hard cases. Without you, the backlogs would be eternal. BD2412 T 13:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (uninvolved): per BD2412 above. A country title change was obviously going to be a difficult close no matter the outcome. Some people will always be unhappy but that isn't the closer's problem. I do not see a supervote here and it was certainly open long enough. I probably would've left it for an admin, but there's no policy error there. Endorse. C F A 💬 14:54, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn to no consensus (and return to original name). I was not involved in the RM but since the votes were about equal, it clearly makes sense to do a no consensus result instead of moving. It's clear that this should have remained at its longstanding name since its been kept that way for 12 years. Ngrams shouldn't be the only thing used to determine which is the common name. It's unfortunate that it stopped being covered from 2020 onwards but since it has hundreds of years of data, it doesn't really matter for historic stuff. Côte d'Ivoire is not Costa Rica, namely because its never been known as the Rich Coast. Same with Stade de France, Gare du Nord and Tour de France. While Côte d'Ivoire has been around for long (circa 1986), media outlets and general discussion still refer to it by its translated name, especially for Germanic and Romance languages. It's safe to say Côte d'Ivoire is used in Russian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc, at least in official contexts. JuniperChill (talk) 15:16, 13 July 2024 (UTC).[reply]
• Overturn to no consensus (uninvolved). The close was overly reliant on ngrams, which are based solely on books, at the expense of other sources.~~ Jessintime (talk) 02:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC) (Additional comment: While there are several calls for relisting, I don't believe it is appropriate in this case. The discussion was open almost two weeks and nearly 20 editors participated, a turnout that is higher than usual for a requested move, so I don't think extending this request will resolve the matter. My suggestion would be to come back in six months with better evidence less reliant on ngrams. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 20:12, 15 July 2024 (UTC))[reply]
• Overturn to no consensus (uninvolved), per Fyunck(click), Amakuru, SmokeyJoe, JuniperChill and Jessintime as well as per comments by SportingFlyer and Ahecht. When a Wikipedia entry is at this level of importance, the consensus is expected to be overwhelming. Here, there were eight votes in favor of the move to Côte d'Ivoire and nine votes in favor of retaining Ivory Coast. Clearly, no consensus, even if some of the votes in favor of Ivory Coast have been described as not being solidly based. As for the inherent merit of Ivory Coast → Côte d'Ivoire, it can be certainly argued that such city name changes as Kiev → Kyiv and Odessa → Odesa or such country name changes as Rhodesia → Zimbabwe and South West Africa→ Namibia were more readily accepted, being based upon letting go of cultural oppression and colonial past. On the other hand, although official sources have accepted that Turkey's English name is Türkiye and Ivory Coast's English name is Côte d'Ivoire, that acceptance has not made the two revised country names WP:COMMONNAMES in the English-speaking world. To use general examples, it would be as if Croatia announced that its English name is now Hrvatska, Italy announced that its English name is now Italia or Poland announced that its English name is now Polska. As a final point, it may be noted that no English-language country exonym uses accents and / or diacritics which makes Türkiye and Côte d'Ivoire even more problematic as putative common names. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 00:26, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Roman Spinner: Requiring an "overwhelming" consensus based solely on the "level of importance" would basically guarantee that an important article at a suboptimal title would never be moved to its optimal title. Look at the eight discussions over six years that were required to move Yoghurt to Yogurt, or the ten discussions over eight years to move Hillary Rodham Clinton to Hillary Clinton; both have finally resulted in stable titles that, in retrospect, would have been optimal all along. BD2412 T 01:02, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • ​But that did happen before with this very article in 2012 and that consensus has remained stable since. —  AjaxSmack  03:09, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • @BD2412: Since English Wikipedia is consensus-based, we would likely expect important titles such as this one to at least have a convincing consensus if not an "overwhelming" one. The first Kiev → Kyiv RM was in July 2007, but did not succeed until September 2020 when nearly all media outlets were already using "Kyiv", although it was being used by U.S. government sources and the UN well before 2007 and various ngrams had been confirming its increasing usage. As for the matter at hand, the insistence upon diacritics in the Ivory Coast → Côte d'Ivoire and Turkey → Türkiye proposals makes those even less likely to be accepted into general use, with few if any media outlets in the English-speaking world using those forms. Ultimately, each set of title changes brings its own set of circumstances. Geographic names carry historical, nationalistic and linguistic baggage, while main headers for current events tend to be dynamic. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 20:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Roman Spinner: We have a WP:RM process. It allows for notification of affected projects, and relists of discussions by any editor who thinks more time is needed for discussion. We have no rule, nor any mechanism, for deeming articles "important titles" for this purpose, nor for giving any such articles special treatment. I have started a discussion at the Village Pump asking whether we should have such a policy in place. So far the consensus seems to be against it. BD2412 T 20:56, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
          • @BD2412: I recently submitted a song title RM {at Talk:Friendly Persuasion (Thee I Love)#Requested move 12 June 2024} that was moved seven days later with no participation. Obviously, Yoghurt → Yogurt elicited much greater interest, but is still unlikely to compete in importance with a world-class city or, for that matter, a country name. Of course, designating a title as "important" is in itself a likely mischaracterization. Perhaps, "controversial title" or "high-volume participation title" may be a more intuitive description which would carry with it much greater expectation of a strong consensus, making the Village Pump discussion most welcome indeed. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 21:52, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • To describe to discussion leading up to moving the article to Ivory Coast in 2012 as an "overwhelming consensus" is quite the leap. By my count the !vote was 29-27, and a subsequent MR was inconclusive, with no consensus established to endorse the move. TDL (talk) 01:52, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn to no consensus or relist (involved). There was no appearance to date of consensus in the discussion and the closer's only substantive rationale was a Google Ngram plot, which is only a small part of determining a common name. —  AjaxSmack  03:09, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn to no consensus or relist (uninvolved), per all the arguments raised in favour of these options above, especially by SportingFlyer, Amakuru, SmokeyJoe, JuniperChill, Roman Spinner, and AjaxSmack. There is clearly no consensus in favour of a rename as of now. Maybe a clearer consensus favouring either the old or the new name will emerge after a relist, so that might be worth a try. Gawaon (talk) 06:39, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Relist The proper course of action would be to let the discussion run longer, as it's evident now that more people would join in. Simply changing the result based on votes is pointless, as it doesn't truly resolve the issue (there are rules and precedents for this). In my opinion, arguing that n-grams are merely specialized books and that we should also gather information from non-specialized sources like "how young people talk on Facebook, or rather Instagram or TikTok" diminishes the value of Wikipedia. This is similar to arguing that Côte d'Ivoire doesn't sound English. However, it is stated here that move reviews are not intended to "reargue debates about page moves," so relisting is the correct choice. (Reopen the discussion, but with a warning for editors supporting the move that it is necessary to find something beyond n-gram, otherwise they will definitely not succeed) Chrz (talk) 19:59, 15 July 2024 (UTC) EDITED Chrz (talk) 16:20, 20 July 2024 (UTC) Ad "The discussion was open almost two weeks and nearly 20 editors participated" it does not deserve to be relisted: A high-profile article like one about a country certainly deserves enough time to address all objections and involve as many editors as possible to lend weight to the decision. Why? Because according to the COMMONNAME guidelines all "related" articles where the name appears need to be renamed after a country is renamed And the vast majority of occurrences of the name in article text also need to be changed - according to Wikipedia's COMMONNAME guidelines, there cannot be more than one name for a country. (To paraphrase and exaggerate) Chrz (talk) 20:09, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (uninvolved). This MRV is yet another example of French language erasure on Wikipedia (see Quebec as one of the most blatant examples). The problem is that it was at Ivory Coast for so long. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 02:17, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Just so I understand this correctly, "French language erasure on Wikipedia" in this case refers to the é? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:16, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  French language erasure is when a French-speaking place has a different name in English, apparently. Is Mexico not being at México yet another example of Spanish language erasure on Wikipedia? Kyoto Grand (talk) 19:21, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes. The official name is Québec, not Quebec. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 00:09, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Which is totally irrelevant, as we go by English common names. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 09:45, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  What the heck does this post have to do with whether a proper closing was made? This is just an editor from French-speaking Quebec that hates the term Ivory Coast. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:36, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Because it's a good sign that the tides may be turning. My Québec example is because the official name of the province has the accent aigu (and thus it should be the name of the article), and the official name of Côte d'Ivoire isn't Ivory Coast (and thus the article name isn't Ivory Coast). What English language RSes say don't matter in terms of French language place names. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 00:13, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  This is not a serious argument. Maybe it'd have some cachet in the 1400s when English court officials still wrote in French, but it's 2024, 95% of non-Canadians pronounce Quebec with a /kwə/, and the norms of the French language are about as relevant to the English name of the Ivory Coast as they are to the pronunciation of the word 'judgement'. And it's called an acute accent. Kyoto Grand (talk) 02:23, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  This is the English Wikipedia. Of course English-language sources matter. Should Somalia be located at Soomaaliya? Should China be located at 中国? C F A 💬 15:15, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Does the usage of "États-Unis" in French count as English erasure? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:10, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Hmmm? "the tides may be turning?" What, that the world is universally speaking French now? Fyunck(click) (talk) 18:35, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist (nominator) appears to be the solution, I can understand no consensus as votes were even and if it had to be closed now I'd say that would be the most accurate outcome. My bludgeoning of discussion certainly malformed the RM and I'd be against endorsing it when the margins are so small. Kowal2701 (talk) 17:17, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse – I would've closed it the same way. The "Ivory Coast is the English name" argument is, as Red Slash points out, unevidenced in the RM and borders on tautological. I've noticed a lot, in similar RMs, an argument that USEENGLISH dictates we must use English words in article titles, which is a completely incorrect reading of the policy; article titles, by and large, use the most common name in use in English, not the most common name which is rendered in the English language. Hence Stade de France and Olympiastadion (Berlin), not Stadium of France and Olympic Stadium (Berlin), for example. Given the well-argued rationales in favour of a move – frankly, it was a matter of if-not-when for Côte d'Ivoire – and the faulty arguments against the move, I think a move result is definitely justifiable, and like I said, I would've gone the same way. Sceptre (talk) 21:10, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The RM literally includes a source that says "Ivory Coast is the usual country name in the English language". That source may be wrong, but the argument "Ivory Coast is the English name" is clearly not "unevidenced". CMD (talk) 02:07, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn to no consensus. Can't assign extra weight to the ngram-based argument relative to "ngram skeptics" when the latter bring up some kind of evidence of their own, such as a list of sources. Consensus could have formed in spite of this methodological disagreement, but it didn't. Oppose relisting; there's no basis for that.—Alalch E. 11:25, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I don't see any consensus. The vote-tally is fairly evenly split, usage in major news outlets is split, the Ngram usage has a slight preference for Côte d'Ivoire but does not clearly mandate one or the other. The "official name" and "use English" arguments seem to balance out. Unless this is listed on WP:CENT, I don't expect a relist would find consensus. Walsh90210 (talk) 15:19, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn. (with opposition to a relist) < uninvolved > With a good deal of respect to this closer, in this case I think I would have closed as "no consensus". Editor Roman S. said it all above, and judging by the history of requested moves for this article, and admitting that my personal preference is for the French spelling, I would have to agree that the English spelling belongs at the top of this Wikipedia entry. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 18:14, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (involved) - The primary argument to overturn the close is that while there was agreement that the ngram results showed that Cote d'Ivoire was more common, this is not conclusive as these results are restricted to books and Ivory Cost is more common in other sources, which was not taken into account. That's not true. As the closer pointed out, the issue is that those that opposed the move largely relied on dismissing the evidence that showed Cote d'Ivoire was more common, without providing alternative evidence that objectively showed that Ivory Cost was more common. Yes, there was a dozen or so links provided that showed Ivory Coasts was used by for example major news media, but these were offset by a dozen or so other links that showed that Cote d'Ivoire was also used by major news media, Britannica, Google Maps, etc. The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from this evidence is that it supports that usage is mixed, but does not clearly indicate which name is more common. Especially so since for such a small sample size is highly subject to cherry picking of sources, unlike the ngram results which are more objective as they consider a much broader set of sources.

I'd also reiterate my point from the RM that even if the evidence isn't conclusive that Cote d'Ivoire is the common name, it's clear that usage is split and that the evidence provided did not show that Ivory Coast is the widely used common name. WP:NCGN#Use_English states that the local name should be used in cases where there is no widely accepted common name in English, so in this case we should defer to Cote d'Ivoire in the absence of such evidence. TDL (talk) 01:52, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ABC News (United States) (talk|edit|history|logs|links|archive|watch) (RM) (Discussion with closer)

Ignoring the "per nom" and "as above" arguments, I do not see a clear consensus. It looks like a 50-50 to me. So, as other users pointed at BillMammal's user talk page, I believe that that this discussion should be reopened and relisted. GTrang (talk) 00:29, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse. I believe that the arguments in favor of moving the page that I brought up are stronger than the arguments in opposition to moving the page that were brought up. It is true that more individuals supported moving the page than opposed moving the page (it was over a 2-1 margin in favor of moving). A bean count, of course, is not enough; consensus is ascertained by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy. But since the quality of the arguments made by those involved in supporting the move (including myself) were higher than those of those who opposed the move, I see a consensus attained, and I believe that the close faithfully reflects the consensus attained in the move discussion. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 00:38, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've notified those who participated in the requested move and also those who participated in the ensuing discussion on closer's talk about this discussion. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 00:59, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn (uninvolved). Clearly not a solid consensus for a move of this nature. For reasons, see here. There have been many RMs in the past. One as poorly attended and poorly argued as this one, open for only one week, does not create a consensus for a massive change. Srnec (talk) 00:45, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The move request was opened on 18 June 2024 and closed on 3 July 2024. That is to say, the discussion was not open for only one week, but was instead open for over two weeks. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 00:49, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct. I was looking at something dated 24 June, but evidently not the close... Srnec (talk) 00:53, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There have been eight previous requested moves on this topic; of those, only two had more participation, and even those not by much - and generally, seven participants is a good number for an RM. BilledMammal (talk) 01:08, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Emphasis on poorly argued. For example: The Australian broadcaster reaches 8 digit levels of people on a weekly basis, while the U.S. company averages around 7 million on nightly newscasts. I must be missing something because this clearly establishes the US broadcaster as the more watched. The support comment that oppose arguments have a very US-centric worldview bears no relationship to the actual preceding oppose comments. To this we can add per nom and as above. The whole discussion is so short it is very easy to read in full. Which I did after I saw the link corrections in my watchlist. I was flabbergasted that this counted as consensus. In a very different case, it might. But these are highly visible articles with a history of RMs. (And just for the record, I am neither Australian nor American.) Srnec (talk) 03:31, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To explain my consideration of that as closer, I saw that as evidence backing the supporters claims that there was no primary topic; they don't establish which is more popular - more significant - because they aren't directly comparable they do establish that both have very large audiences that are comparable in size.

Importantly, this wasn't disputed by the editors opposing the move, one of whom even interpreted the figures as meaning that the Australian source is more popular. BilledMammal (talk) 03:46, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Going to chime in here, using views to determine an article merger/move makes no sense in this case. There needs to be a better argument developed. This move discussion was a lame duck one (no offense) based on the number of views a network / program received. Soafy234 (talk) 22:35, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relist (uninvolved). I originally outlined my thoughts on the closer's talk page after the various moves started to popup in my watchlist. I don't think there was a clear consensus and it should have been closed as "no consensus" or relisted. The non-admin closer (BilledMammal) gave equal weight to the two "per nom"/"as above" comments as the other 2 support comments & the nominator (they stated: "If someone writes an effective argument, it would be a waste of editor time to require those who agree with that argument to rewrite it rather than saying "per x""). But this shouldn't come down to a WP:VOTE & should instead be judged based on the quality of the discussion. Remove those two "per nom" comments and it becomes 2 support and 2 oppose with BilledMammal as a tie breaker determining the discussion should be closed as "support"; there also wasn't really a discussion between the editors who stated their thoughts. There really only seemed to be two higher quality comments (one oppose, one support) arguing about WP:PRIMARYTOPIC so I think further discussion to determine what the primary topic is would be useful. Sariel Xilo (talk) 01:09, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, when closing RM's the nominator is also considered to support the proposed move. BilledMammal (talk) 01:10, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist <uninvolved> pointedly not because I think the closure was wrong at the time, but because the ensuing discussion on BilledMammal's talk page should have made clear that interested editors had not fully had their say. The closure was procedurally correct, but I don't think "you snooze, you lose" is the right answer in this situation, particularly since there's no evidence people were trying to game the system by waiting. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 01:11, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you, Extraordinary Writ. I don't have much to say here, and I certainly have no opinion on the underlying matter, but if I had been asked to close that request I would have relisted it. The subsequent discussion on the editor's talk page made that abundantly clear, IMO. Drmies (talk) 01:35, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  One concern I have with a relist is that it means participation won't be representative of the community. This is because editors who see the link corrections are more likely to check the discussion if they oppose the move, because they may want to overturn the result. In contrast, those who support the move are likely to consider it settled. This can be seen in comments like this one. BilledMammal (talk) 06:42, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  How ... How in the world is two weeks not enough time?? RM policy is for a minimum of a week. Come on, man, people had enough time. People miss out on important move requests all the time, you shrug and move on because we can't keep every request open for months waiting for everyone to chime in. Red Slash 05:57, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Red Slash There is no policy, or even guideline, that states that RMs should be open for a minimum of a week. WP:RM is a process page and WP:RMCLOSE is an essay. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 17:57, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn/relist I wasn't involved in the discussion but figured it would certainly be a lot longer considering the past discussions to move American Broadcasting Company to the ABC title itself were a lot deeper, more involved, and considered the gravity of moving an article with WLH numbers in the thousands. But looking at a couple of the votes specifically, one of them was from an editor with fewer than 200 edits (most of them in mainly one talk page, not at all in article space for several years), one was from a British editor with no skin in the game complaining about the opposers as having a 'US-centric worldview' and nothing else, and then one simply saying 'as above'. Considering that the WLH for either the US or AU orgs are well into the ten-thousands combined with sources, this definitely needed much more notice and much more time, and much better consensus than 'per nom' (see Disney Jr. for an example of a recent discussion which was properly done even if I opposed the move as pointless because we're not a marketing arm of The Walt Disney Company or any corporation). This doesn't involve an obscure Asian version of an MTV video channel whose links are less than 50 at the most with none of its website being used to source items, but two major news organizations which are used in thousands of articles as sources, and the close and overall botching of the move definitely requires a much deeper discussion. Nate • (chatter) 01:17, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  With respect to one was from a British editor, I didn't think that we discounted arguments on the basis of nationality. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 01:24, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  or if they have "no skin in the game". TarnishedPath^talk 08:23, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Red-tailed hawk @TarnishedPath thanks for the back up. Not sure what 'skin in the game' is, sounds like an Americanism to me. I'm off for a cup of Earl Grey and some crumpets now, followed by possibly some fish and chips and delivering a few googlies. YorkshireExpat (talk) 16:29, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• (edit conflict) Endorse. < uninvolved > There appears to be a good bit of overreacting to this move request, and after reading all of it, I still cannot figure out why. Seems clearcut to me, and I would have closed this RM the exact same way. Who cares about the 5/2 count, the args were greater on the support side. This closure was perfectly reasonable and in accord with the closing instructions. What's with all the freakin' freak outs and block for??? Please, everybody just calm down! P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 01:21, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Paine Ellsworth, I believe there was a very good reason for the block, and your arguments are a bit on the emotional side. When an editor is asked to stop, they should probably stop--and note that I unblocked immediately after being assured that it would not continue, for which I am grateful. Drmies (talk) 01:35, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    You did only give me four minutes to stop, which personally I felt was a little short given it took me five minutes to notice, but nevermind BilledMammal (talk) 01:40, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    You were warned by SilverLocust that you were in violation of the bot policy 10 hours before the block. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE) 15:26, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Based on discussion at WT:BOTPOL, I am not convinced I was in violation of the BOTPOL; this seems to fall under what is acceptable for user scripts, though just for the benefit of hiding it from watchlists it will be better to run larger tasks on a bot account in the future. BilledMammal (talk) 15:31, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Forgive me please, editor Drmies, I really am not the emotional one in this discussion, and have noted a good deal of seemingly unjustified and heated emotion on the closer's talk page. I have asked for a calm down, and I would dearly appreciate it if everybody would just dial it down a notch or two, so this move review can get to the gist of this matter. Your block of the closer, one of WP's best page movers, appears to have been just a teensy bit unjustified, but please don't go into it here. I don't really need an explanation, but my talk page is always open, when and if necessary. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 02:32, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I think the block was about stopping the script since unlike a bot, there wasn't a clear off switch. Regardless of how this discussion goes, a lot of editors have flagged more efficient tools BilledMammal (and various page lurkers) can use going forwards. Sariel Xilo (talk) 02:52, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    You, and other editors, may be interested in participating in participating in this discussion that I opened at WT:BOTPOL about the link correction feature of Move+. I believe that it is currently the most efficient tool for this, although there are some modifications and additional features that I intend to add to improve it further.

    Regarding the block, if I hadn't been active at the time I would have agreed with it - before stepping away I even considered leaving a note saying "I'm currently AFK. If Move+ starts breaking things, or otherwise needs to stop, block me" - but since I was active I wish they had waited a little longer. Waiting ten or fifteen minutes would have been reasonable in my opinion. However, it doesn't really matter, and this is the wrong location to discuss it. BilledMammal (talk) 03:19, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse (uninvolved) the discussion was active for more than 7 days, the minimum required. A RM banner was placed on the article for the duration of the discussion. Given the high amount of visitors, one would think more would participate in the discussion. No further notifications are required in the RM process. The last substantial discussion was years ago and consensus can change over time. This nom was backed by figures rather than 'it should be this way' nom like we saw in the previous discussions. After determining the quality of arguments, the close is reasonable and I would have closed the discussion in the same direction. (although I would utilise the aid of other editors to help update the links via dabsort tool. In my experience when dealing with similar moves that had thousands of links, there would be a minority portion of them wrongly linked in the first place and this would be an opportunity to correct the links). – robertsky (talk) 01:47, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn (uninvolved). I don't think this move was appropriate considering by far, the American station is the primary topic, and gets much more page views than the Australian one. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 02:46, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (uninvolved): It's clear from the RM discussion that those supporting the move were both numerically superior and had stronger arguments than those who opposed the move. Consensus in the discussion is clear. TarnishedPath^talk 04:09, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The Consensus policy states: Many of these discussions will involve polls of one sort or another; but as consensus is determined by the quality of arguments (not by a simple counted majority), polls should be regarded as structured discussions rather than voting. Responses indicating individual explanations of positions using Wikipedia policies and guidelines are given the highest weight. I am only seeing one argument that uses Wikipedia policies and guidelines in the original discussion supporting the move, which is that of the nominator. It seems disingenuous to suggest one side had "stronger arguments" given that. I would be interested to know which multiple arguments you are seeing that I am not. Οἶδα (talk) 04:37, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I saw no strength of argument in the oppose votes. I did see a couple of move voters rebutting the oppose votes, without answer. TarnishedPath^talk 05:37, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist <uninvolved>: Besides the dearth of explanations (only two arguments were put forth that included mention of Wikipedia policies and guidelines), the original discussion had little to no actual back-and-forth. You create a requested move discussion and wait patiently but receive only scant engagement to this end. Irritating, I know. Nonetheless inappropriate for a non-admin closure of this magnitude after such little development. Nothing about the discussion could be described as fully developed. I believe a primary topic move requiring the amendment of over 13,000 articles deserves that. So I am inclined to co-sign Extraordinary Writ's message. The discussion is evidently waiting to happen. Unfortunately it took watchlists getting loaded with thousands of backlink changes to awaken it. Οἶδα (talk) 05:25, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  One week is typical. Two weeks is long. This was longer than that. I wouldn't have blinked at closing it. Red Slash 05:55, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse per User:Paine Ellesworth. The objections to the RM on the talk page seem to have been a lot of excitement that some procedure or convention wasn't followed, but a less excited/excitable look at this situation doesn't make it obvious that there is anything that wasn't followed. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 05:43, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn (uninvolved): It's clear that the move was rushed. It was opened only 2 weeks before and no previous editors that opposed it before were notified that a new review was ongoing. Previous consensus thus still needs to be included unless new information is presented that invalidates that previous consensus. No such new information was presented. Ergzay (talk) 06:25, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  2 weeks is not rushed for a RM, as they generally go for a week. Also, there is absolutely no policy requiring previous editors that opposed be notified. In fact only notifying editors who opposed previously could be considered WP:CANVASSING if editors who were previously supportive of a move weren't also notified. TarnishedPath^talk 07:23, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @TarnishedPath In the last two reviews there was only opposing viewpoints so that would still be a full notification of all previously involved editors. Ergzay (talk) 01:16, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  And the previous two RMs had less participation. If you were suggesting that all previous RM participants should have been notified (which there is exactly zero policy requirement for) then I would expect to go back further than two RMs. In any case that is not a policy based argument that there was anything deficient in the RM. TarnishedPath^talk 03:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  There is no requirement that past discussion participants be notified for any discussion on Wikipedia. If someone cared that much about the ABC article(s) in question, they were free to put those articles on their watchlist. The mere fact that notifying past discussion participants is permitted in many cases (so long as it is neutral) does not impose a requirement to do so, and failing to identify any policy-based argument that it was a requirement here, it is not appropriate to use the fact that was not done as a "deficiency" in the move request by the opener. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 04:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse <involved>. Clear majority to move (hardly "50-50"!) and clearly superior arguments given the Australian one is a national broadcaster and this is not USpedia. -- Necrothesp (talk) 07:43, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Relist - I was the one who relisted the ABC discussion and after having a look at the pageviews, you can see why the US one is more popular than the AU one. I also stated that the page should have been move first so that other people like Rodw and Onel5969 can also fix it. I was thinking that its fine for one to fix the links if there are less than 100, but 10,000? Maybe relisting the discussion would help because of the large pageviews between the US and AU news agencys?. One reason why Wikipedia doesn't work by (only) counting votes. (I have learnt it in my first time closing RMs.) JuniperChill (talk) 08:42, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn/relist: This looks like a coup to me. Small participation, short duration, closing editor accused of bias, !votes in favor ignoring these criticisms. Calls to shut this down with the argument "everything was done properly so this should not be reopened" completely miss the point that this was hustled through with minimal participation. I see two sides use various statistics to bludgeon their opponents, completely missing the point: that both sides have a case. To me, it is clear that AUS visitors to Wikipedia expect the AUS ABC while US visitors expect the US ABC (and it's unclear what international visitors expect). To me the solution is obvious: there is no primary topic, meaning ABC News should redirect to the disambig page. CapnZapp (talk) 09:05, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse (uninvolved). Overdue move. Supporting arguments were sound per WP:WORLDVIEW/WP:GLOBALIZE and brings the title into line with Consistency principle per WP:CRITERIA. This is EN.WP, not US.WP. If it were only a tie between US/Aus then I'd be more reticent but as the disambig page now lists many news orgs and channels/outlets using "ABC" (Philippines, Albania, Spain), it's beneficial (or at the very least does no harm) for the US article to be explicitly labelled. PRIMARYTOPIC may have applied 5 years ago but I think that is now eroded far enough to no longer apply. The fact that the American article grabbed the "ABC News" title in 2003 when the overwhelming majority of contributors and visitors were US-based (and there was no Consistency principle) does not mean it is appropriate to retain that today ("first-come-first-served"), given global internet penetration and global users/contributions. Hemmers (talk) 09:18, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist so we can have a proper discussion. There was one argument to move based on a misunderstanding of the source information - oddly it was even stated as a reason to move "The Australian broadcaster reaches 8 digit levels of people on a weekly basis, while the U.S. company averages around 7 million on nightly newscasts" - which, yes, does say that the US ABC News gets seven times as many viewers as the Australian one. Even though the move !vote was based on serious misunderstanding of the source, its logic was rebutted by an !vote in which it was pointed out that we apply different criteria when assessing which articles are the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Only that one !vote quoted appropriate policy - the other comments were not policy based, and/or were not focused on why a title was the primary topic or why the primary topic status should be changed. There was no accurate policy based argument to make the move, though there was one correct policy based reason not to make the move. When discussing and deciding which title should be primary we follow the guidance at WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY, which if followed would have clearly indicated that the US news station is clearly primary in terms of number of readers (the data is currently lost because the page has been moved - but if I recall it was something like 16.1K compared to the Australian 3.3K, and the number of links in and out was in the thousands compared to the hundreds for the Australian station). I think an incident like this should flag up that a requirement of EVERY move request should be that the stats are examined or displayed before a close can be made so we don't make obvious mistakes like this in future. Also, that if there are more than 1,000 links that need changing (or whichever number is agreed), that only an admin experienced in move requests should close the discussion. It appears that considerable disruption was caused by the amount of links that needed changing, and the mover encountered a number of complaints, a whale sized trout, and was briefly blocked. What's done is done, and it appears to me that everyone involved in this was working with the best interests of the project at heart, but we need to learn from this incident so something like this doesn't happen again. SilkTork (talk) 09:22, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I do agree with you on this. I think all page moves that do require a significant amount of changing links should require an administrator to close the discussion and not by a non-administrator. I think an amendment to the process should be made in order to prevent situations like this from happening. Soafy234 (talk) 13:07, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  This is flawed. There are a number of admins here endorsing the close. What's next, scrape WP:NAC? – robertsky (talk) 18:44, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  No, Silk is right. Admins (vs trusted laymen editors) should be closing the toughest moves... not the toughest decision-wise, but logistically. This one was screaming for an admin close. I don't think BilledMammal realized the scope of how many things would have to be changed.

  The substance of the close itself, however, is flawless, and should not be overturned. Red Slash 05:59, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The substance of the close amounted to "moved". No further justification was provided in the closer's statement. Srnec (talk) 15:00, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Even admins would find it hard to work with 10,000 links logistically. The last I checked, admins don't have a magic tool to update 10,000 articles at once. (Move+ as it was, was the next best tool followed by dabsort, other than getting a BOTREQ done). – robertsky (talk) 01:26, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  the data is currently lost because the page has been moved - but if I recall it was something like 16.1K compared to the Australian 3.3K

  Because the ABC News is still a redirect to ABC News (United States), it's possible to get the values by setting "Include redirects"; see here.

  It appears that in the past year articles related to "ABC News" have been viewed almost 399,000 times. Of these 219,000, or 52%, were to the American publication. The next largest was the Australian publication with 50,000, or 12%.

  the number of links in and out was in the thousands compared to the hundreds for the Australian station

  These are still available; adding together the linkcount for both ABC News (United States) and ABC News, we get 11,000 links. The Australian publication gets 7,000, and the Spanish newspaper gets 3,000. BilledMammal (talk) 13:48, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The numbers are more skewed than that. Looking at the '8 digit' citation, the majority (7.742M) of the 13.039M users were counted because they were using an app an average of nine minutes a week, and then all their secondary news outlets were also included in the total. Contrariwise, they only mention the 7.3M times five (36.5M) half-hour top program from their citation but neglect to mention the many other programs produced by US ABC News, the daily 2 hour 2.777M Good Morning America program, the daily 1 hour 2.364 million for The View, the daily hour-long GMA3 morning program at 1.329M, and the nightly half-hour Nightline (0.787M). ABC News US is well into the 8 digit range of daily viewership, and all of these shows are top-rated in their respective timeslots. Those five times a week shows aren't even comprehensive for its television programs, ABC News also produces 20/20, a two hour show once a week. I'm not aware of the data for the ABC News website but I suspect it's not zero.--Noren (talk) 18:44, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist I just involved with discussion regarding the article name change and many "supporters" comments are just adding "per nom", "per above", etc. without any other reasonable argument why the American ABC News must not be primary topic, and some other comments saying that they "support" the move because the opposer comment are US-centric worldview. IMO, this discussion should be reopen again to attract more users to discuss the name change. 103.111.100.82 (talk) 12:40, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  "supporters" comments are just adding "per nom", "per above", etc. without any other reasonable argument why the American ABC News must not be primary topic. I also failed to see any reasonable argument from you as to why American ABC News must be the primary topic. Your argument was merely that when searching ABC News on the internet (presumably you mean Google or some other search engine) that more results come up for the American ABC News than for the Australian ABC News. That happens because presumably you are in America, because when I search for ABC News on the internet, the absolute opposite occurs for me. That is to say your subjective experience of using search engines is not universal and hence wasn't a good argument. The other oppose argument was that there had been too many discussions and therefore the status quo should remain. Again, not a good argument. Both of the oppose arguments were weak arguments. TarnishedPath^talk 13:07, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  And I only see one other argument, which is from the nominator, one which I believe is flawed. So why do you wish to truncate the discussion on the topic? I can understand if you agree with the move result, but I do not understand being satisfied with the discussion (or truly lack thereof) that led to it. The RM discussion was not rushed, but it developed virtually no back-and-forth or scrutiny from a limited group of editors and not community consensus on a wider scale. The magnitude of this move review should indicate that. As I stated above, I believe a primary topic move requiring the amendment of over 13,000 articles deserves more than two arguments put forth. You seem to disagree. Οἶδα (talk) 16:19, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  As discussed by @BilledMammal in a comment above, [t]here have been eight previous requested moves on this topic; of those, only two had more participation. 7 participants in a RM discussion is not exactly smaller than general. I've seen quite a few RM discussions with participation smaller than that. The RM discussion went for fully two weeks, which is longer than the 7 days that they generally go for. There was a banner up on the page and anyone who was interested could have participated. TarnishedPath^talk 02:08, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  And I've seen a plethora of RM discussions of this magnitude that received the attention and deliberation they deserved. I don't care that you've seen other discussions get rubber-stamped without deeper consideration. Other stuff exists, I am aware. I'll repeat myself again, this generated little engagement from a limited group of editors and not community consensus on a wider scale. I believe a primary topic move requiring the amendment of over 13,000 articles deserves more than two arguments put forth. You proudly disagree. Οἶδα (talk) 17:35, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn / re list (not involved). I was not involved whatsoever in the discussion. However, based on the discussion that did happen, there was not consensus whatsoever. Whenever there are moving page discussions, there is more than "per nom" / "per above" on why a page move is needed and not just a few words. I do think that if the discussion were to be reopen, the editors that did edit the page should be pinged (even if it not required) to see if they changed their mind or not. In addition, we should also consider the previous discussions that happen years ago on this same subject which can be found here: Talk:ABC News (United States)/Archive 2.

Soafy234 (talk) 13:06, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn / resist (not involved). The only meaningful vote/comment is the one from the IP. The rest of the discussion is basically lacking valid arguments and there is no real consensus. --Cavarrone 13:24, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  "per nom" is a complete sentence Red Slash 05:54, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:PERNOM. --Cavarrone 07:09, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (not involved): a reasonable close on both the numbers and the arguments. Lots of move discussions a closed on a similar basis - I feel this has only come here because the page has higher traffic. StAnselm (talk) 16:25, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (not involved). The two opposing arguments are not convincing — the first falls afoul of WP:CCC, and the second is incomprehensible. This move was advertised to multiple wikiprojects and nobody offered any better opposing arguments in the generous amount of time that the move request was left open, so I doubt anything good will come from relisting it. Einsof (talk) 17:05, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Relist/uninvolved, I was surprised to see such a limited discussion when the edits to prepare for the move hit my watchlist due to citations to the American ABC. While this may ultimately be the outcome, it needs broader discussion to call it consensus.

Star Mississippi 17:41, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (uninvolved). While I kinda get the concerns about the number of editors who commented, this discussion was open more than long enough for an RM. And while this has been discussed in the past, it appears the last RM was in 2017, so that argument holds less weight. I’m also disappointed with tone of some of those arguing against the close here; calling it a coup or saying an editor’s opinion doesn’t count because of where they reside doesn’t help your cause. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 01:21, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (uninvolved). Discussion had a reasonable participation and was open for two weeks, which is plenty of time. Five editors supported the move and only two editors opposed. Maybe the supporting arguments could have been better explained, but the same could be said about the opposing arguments. There was only one reasoned opposing comment, the other was just WP:STONEWALLING. There was a clear consensus to move. Vpab15 (talk) 08:47, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I disagree that there was one reasoned opposing comment as their argument was that search engine results are evidence for a primary topic. Please see my rebuttal of 103.111.100.82 above. TarnishedPath^talk 10:14, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist (uninvolved). I'm surprise to see the discussion regarding the page move from ABC News to ABC News (United States). While there's a enough majority vote to move the article, most supporter voters lacked the reasonable argument why the page should be move, other than "per nom" or "per above". Maybe the discussion should be relist to have more editors involve in the discussion to reach more clear consensus. 103.144.14.16 (talk) 10:00, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Noting that this IP address geolocates to Indonesia like 103.111.100.82 above. TarnishedPath^talk 10:12, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  And both to Bandar Lampung BilledMammal (talk) 10:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @BilledMammal, what are the odds of two different editors from Bandar Lampung being interested in a yank and an aussie broadcaster? TarnishedPath^talk 11:08, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Some editors here (and elsewhere) do not seem to realise that "per nom" etc is a perfectly acceptable argument and always has been. It merely means that the editor completely agress with the nominator and does not feel the need to reiterate the same arguments in slightly different language. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:53, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I completely agree with you that "per nom" is acceptable, and when closing I have always given such !votes equal weighting with the nomination. In this case the nomination was based on a significant error - the nom was arguing that the Australian ABC News was getting an equal audience to the American one, when the source used was saying that the American ABC News has a seven times greater audience (comparing weekly Australian figures with daily American figures). As such any "per nom" !vote in that discussion carried little weight, as the person supporting the nomination had not checked, and was making the same error. It is the role of the closer to read and understand the arguments, and to weigh how they apply to the greater consensus of our guidelines and policies. It is not the job of the closer to simply count. A bot could do that. We don't use bots to close discussions because it requires a human to read, check, understand, and give weight to the arguments. SilkTork (talk) 13:51, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The nom's argument was The Australian broadcaster reaches 8 digit levels of people on a weekly basis, while the U.S. company averages around 7 million on nightly newscasts; the sources provided showed the Australian source had 13,000,000 users per week while the American source had 7,000,000 viewers per night. When closing I interpreted this as them arguing that they had comparable audiences, and since this wasn't self-evidently contradicted by the sources, and no editor opposing the move presented an argument against it, I had no basis to consider the argument invalid.

  Here, you introduce the argument that the American source had seven times the viewers, but this isn't self evident based on the sources, and as closer it would be inappropriate of me to introduce new arguments. I say it isn't self-evident because it appears that both sources are talking about unique users. This means that you can't multiply the American daily figure by seven to get the unique weekly users, as some will have watched on multiple nights. BilledMammal (talk) 10:31, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The source does not say that ABC News Australia has 13,000,000 users per week, the source says that ABC, the parent organisation, has that number, including other sources, such as the Kids channels. The source says: ABC News has weekly users averaging 7.7 million. But, the main point here, is that even if the source was saying 13 million a week, that still doesn't match the 49 million a week of the US ABC News. And even if it did match the US ABC News, what really matters to us is the readership of the article. The local audience doesn't matter as much as the Wikipedia audience. These are established articles so we have clear evidence of the readership, [11], which shows that the US ABC News has more readers than all other ABC News articles put together. When deciding which article is primary it is the Wikipedia audience/readership that we consider, not the audience/readership on other platforms. That is the established way of deciding these things, and is laid down in our guidelines. This is pretty much a slam dunk No Move because the Wikipedia audience/reader figures are so much higher than not just the Aussie article, but all the ABC News articles. We traditionally have also taken into account Google hits, though we don't rely on those unless it's a new article. We prefer using Wikipedia's actual viewing figures for existing articles. We also take into account links in and out, as that tends to indicate importance of the topic to Wikipedia itself, and the potential disruption which would be caused by moving an established article with thousands of links. The nom's argument, even if accurate, carries little weight, which is what the second oppose comment was saying. Wikipedia discussions are always closed by judging consensus formed by reasoned arguments which follow existing guidelines and policies. We don't just count the numbers. The main guideline for this RM discussion is WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY which lists the four main indicators - WikiNav (not usable at the moment because of the page move - but I looked at it before the move, and it was very clear that the US article was primary); Wikipedia article traffic statistics, which I link above, and which shows that no move should take place by our criteria; usage in English reliable sources such as Google, etc, though Google can be tricky, as Google these days may provide response according to location and personal preference; and incoming wikilinks (of which the US article had thousands compared to the hundreds of the Australian one). Points to note include: "A topic may have principal relevance for a specific group of people (for example, as the name of a local place, or software), but not be the primary meaning among a general audience." which directly addresses and supports the comment made in the second oppose. The nom statement did not address the points which by agreed Wikipedia consensus we consider when deciding which article is the primary topic, while the second oppose made some very telling and on point comments. Now, I understand it can be difficult to close a discussion which has four supports and only two opposes as being in favour of the opposes. A question I sometimes have asked potential admins is how they would close such a discussion. And the best answer is the one who says they wouldn't close it or relist it, but would add their own oppose comment clearly explaining the relevant policies and guidelines which support an oppose. Whatever happens here, BilledMammal, I hope you will take these comments on board, and moving forward consider how the arguments in a discussion are properly reasoned in line with policies and guidelines, that sometimes putting your own comment in can be more appropriate than either relisting or closing, and that when closing what is likely to be a contentious topic (reversing the trend of previous RMs is always going to be a contentious topic, renaming an article with thousands of incoming links is always going to be a contentious topic) give a clear closing statement so people can see the rationale behind your judgement. SilkTork (talk) 12:10, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The source says: ABC News has weekly users averaging 7.7 million You're right, I misread that - although 7.7 isn't the full picture, it misses the ABC news app etc.

  the US ABC News has more readers than all other ABC News articles put together

  That is true, but only just - 52% to 48%. Further, the US ABC News only has four times the views of the Australian one, and the community has no set definition of much more likely than any other single topic; in some circumstances it has accepted four times as sufficient to meet that requirement, but in others it has rejected it.

  of which the US article had thousands compared to the hundreds of the Australian one

  That isn't correct; the US article has 11,000, the Australian has 7,000, and several other ABC's also have thousands.

  However, the biggest issue is that no editor made these arguments. What you're asking me to do is to introduce novel arguments, and then rule that the arguments I just made are the "right" arguments - to WP:SUPERVOTE.

  Further, even if these arguments had been made by one of the editors opposing, I wouldn't have been able to give them additional weight for two reasons. First, it is reasonable for editors to argue that 52% doesn't sufficiently meet the definition of more likely than all the other topics combined, and editors have successfully argued that in other discussions. Second, I interpreted the supporting arguments as implicitly arguing that there is no primary topic by long-term significance, and since there is no consensus on which aspect takes precedence I wouldn't be able to give either sides !votes additional weight.

  I will take your comments on board in the future, but aside from leaving a closing comment there is nothing I would have done differently in this case. BilledMammal (talk) 13:26, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  7 million daily viewers does not translate into 49 million a week. If the same 7 million people watch ABC news (US) every day, they still only have 7 million actual viewers each week. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 21:05, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Necrothesp WP:PERNOM disagrees a little bit, but if an argument has already been made, you agree with it, and there's little to add I see little value in padding personally. YorkshireExpat (talk) 18:01, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  What SilkTork said. I have no problem with "per nom", but it cannot strengthen a bad case. Srnec (talk) 01:46, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (uninvolved): The supporting arguments are clearly stronger, and the opposing arguments are clearly US-centric, a frequent issue on Wikipedia. This wasn't a discussion to determine which ABC News is the primary topic – it was a discussion to determine if the American one is, and there is clearly no consensus that the American one should remain the primary topic. The obvious solution is to disambiguate both. MClay1 (talk) 01:40, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Are you looking at the same RM as I am? The first oppose comment reads This has gone through many requested moves and all of them were to keep the status quo. What is "US-centric" about that? The other, posted by an Indonesian IP with imperfect English, reads: While ABC News owned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) had considerable more audiences in absolute terms than the U.S. counterpart with similar name, we don't considered that, because without specify the country that originated when we searched on internet, "ABC News" is overhelmingly referred to the American one instead of Australian, even when we included the digital and social media platforms. How is it US-centric to (mistakenly) assert that the Australian ABC is more watched than the American one? Or to inform us that the American ABC dominates internet search results in Indonesia? Srnec (talk) 01:46, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  US-centrism is the basis behind many of the opposing comments in previous RMs referred to by the first comment (and also in comments on this discussion). The nonsensical IP comment is possibly rooted in the same thing – what metric are they using to determine that ABC News overwhelming refers to the American company instead of the Australian one on internet searches? Most major search engines are American and results are often tailored to the user. When I search in Australia, I get the opposite result. It's not a good argument. MClay1 (talk) 07:59, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The IP's comment is no more nonsensical or irrelevant than the nominator's. That is why performing the move was wrong. The whole RM is just bad. It is not a solid basis for a major change, which is what this was given the number of pageviews, incoming links and prior RMs. Srnec (talk) 15:00, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• STRONG Endorse (uninvolved). It's never been a part of Wikipedia closing policy to have to read through all the previous RM attempts. This move request was posted publicly, crossposted to the relevant projects, even relisted!!. What more would you want? See you in six months when someone requests to move it back, but until then, the ayes have it, and this move was correctly closed. (Side note: come on!!' This is more than two entire weeks! How long were they supposed to leave it up for?) ... (Second side note: let this be a lesson to all y'all: "this has been requested and rejected before", in and of itself, is not' a valid argument that will lead to you convincing anyone. Indeed, only one opposer even attempted to make a convincing point as to why to oppose the move. Come on! What could anyone do with this request but to close it as moved? Only one person even attempted to justify why it should not be moved!) Red Slash 05:52, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The "only one person who opposed the move" is the only one person who posted a meaningful and policy-based comment in the discussion. Cavarrone 07:09, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

is the only one person who posted a meaningful and policy-based comment in the discussion. This has been claimed over and over again, however I don't see that this is a correct statement. The oppose voter who cited primary topic used their subjective experience of search engine results as evidence for their claim. That is not in line with policy. TarnishedPath^talk 08:33, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The IP questioned the assumption that (current) TV audience counts towards being a primary topic, referred to WP:PT1, and also directly linked a previous discussion about that point. Is this a irrefutable argument? Probably no, because the IP should had linked some evidence corraborating their point. But is it a policy-based argument? Certainly yes, up to the point that the policy is actually linked. But if you want make the point the whole discussion at that stage was extremely poor, I second that, and that's the reason the closure was premature. Cavarrone 09:56, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An RM being open for two weeks and having 7 editors involved does not speak to a premature close. TarnishedPath^talk 10:07, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If almost all the comments are flimsy to the extreme, anecdotical and non-policy based, it actually is (WP:NOTAVOTE). At best at that stage there was a NC because of the general inconsistency of the comments, but I am not advocating that, as the most reasonable option was to relist the discussion. Cavarrone 10:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Per above comment by Necrothesp above, "per nom" is a perfectly valid argument and always has been. Editors shouldn't be forced to rewrite what someone else argued, when they entirely agree with it. TarnishedPath^talk 11:41, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist (uninvolved) because the sheer length of this discussion relative to the discussion it is reviewing means the "closure" has failed to actually close anything. I think on principle I would consider the closure reasonable, but closures, especially ones that result in over 10,000 edits being made to implement them, need to be broadly accepted by the community and if people are writing 50K of text about whether the closure is valid then it hasn't been. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:31, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This argument is not based on any Wikipedia policy as far as I can see. StAnselm (talk) 18:34, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion did not convince the broader community that the action is right (WP:CONLEVEL). It convinced (also debatable given that consensus is not determined by a simple counted majority) a limited group of editors in which the quality of arguments have now been called into question and resulted in this massive pushback. In determining consensus, we must consider the quality of the arguments, the history of how they came about, the objections of those who disagree, and existing policies and guidelines (WP:CONSENSUS). In a discussion with virtually no back-and-forth or scrutiny and with arguments from both sides having already been demonstrated above to be flawed or even innaccurate, I'm not sure how you can conclude that consensus was reached. The discussion is patently waiting to take place. But instead we waste our time listening to desperate attempts to frame the discussion as being fully developed with ample quality arguments that have been broadly accepted by the community. The magnitude of this move review is becoming preposterous. It is fine to be in agreement with the move result, but let us not suppress community discussion and consensus building. There will never be a convincing argument to that end. Οἶδα (talk) 00:28, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The question - per Wikipedia:Move review - is whether the close was "within closer's discretion and reasonably interpreted consensus in the discussion". The fact that there is pushback from people who feel like they missed out in having their say is irrelevant. You are making WP:CONLEVEL mean something it was never meant to mean: there was nothing in the discussion or the close that "overrode community consensus on a wider scale". StAnselm (talk) 04:55, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And BilledMammal did not reasonably interpret consensus in the discussion, as outlined repeatedly above by Srnec and SilkTork. Refer to these posts and perhaps respond to them (you have not). Οἶδα (talk) 08:42, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is precisely the issue. But you won't receive any interesting responses, just editors obfuscating the fact that they wish to stifle discussion. Unfortunately, several editors here are unwavering on the topic. They are adamant to suppress community consensus on a wider scale. Because apparently what constitutes consensus to them is a discussion from a limited group of editors that resulted in virtually no substantive discussion (only two arguments were put forth that included mention of Wikipedia policies and guidelines). And when you demonstrate that it has not been broadly accepted by the community nor is it sufficient to cause the revision of over 10,000 articles they will just tell you that plenty of other paltry discussions have been accepted as consensus in the past so we needn't go into the matter further. Οἶδα (talk) 23:07, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse. Look, if the community wants to establish a policy requiring that RM requests be held open for a longer time, or held open for a longer time with respect to some particular class of articles (based on number of incoming links, page views, past discussions, or whatever else), that's fine, implement that policy. As it stands, however, this was a policy-compliant close, and a fair reading of consensus in the discussion. BD2412 T 19:36, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Relist per WP:CONLOCAL and Pppery. My inclination is that this was the "right" outcome but given the scale of the change and the amount of discussion in the initial move request compared to here suggests there's more the community wants to consider in this matter. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:01, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But that's not the way move reviews are supposed to work, is it? StAnselm (talk) 04:46, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I absolutely think it's the purpose of move review to assess if the correct consensus was determined as determined by appropriate weighting of policies, of which Consensus and its subsection about Local Consensus being one that is relevant here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:02, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse. I find the closer’s arguments reasonable and I do not believe there is one clear primary topic here. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:55, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse (uninvolved). The closer accurately evaluated the consensus. The mere fact prior discussions did not come to the same conclusion does not mean that consensus here was not different. The discussion was listed appropriately at all applicable areas, and others had their chance over 2+ weeks to comment in favor of or against the move proposal(s). I believe BD2412 puts it very well above. If the community wants to discuss different requirements for how long move requests must be open, or for a required notification of all past editors if a new move request is opened on a page they had previously commented on a move request, then that's fine. But this closure was made in line with current policies and procedure, and people feeling bad/regretting that they didn't go to comment before it was closed does not change that fact. This MR here is not the place to re-hash the arguments in favor of or opposed, and even the "new" information that was presented does not actually support overturning (weekly viewers cannot be extrapolated from daily viewers, for example). Thus the close should stand, and normal procedures for beginning a new move review followed if editors feel it is necessary. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 22:55, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist per above. I had mistakenly thought that this was settled, but it seems to not be the case. For a majorly disruptive page move like this (with so many incoming links), perhaps there should be a mandatory extended discussion period and a central watchlist rather than solely relying on project notices. SounderBruce 01:28, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The discussion period was already extended. As for central watchlist, there is the WP:RMC for now. Anything beyond is a separate discussion on refining the WP:RM process. – robertsky (talk) 04:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  You do realize, don't you, that all the incoming links have been fixed now? StAnselm (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn (no consensus). The discussion was inadequate. The nomination was confusing with obliquely presented facts, to a fault. The sole pertinent question of “is there a PrimaryTopic” was not sufficiently examined.
  As the nomination is at fault, do not relist, but allow a fresh nomination after a short pause. SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:38, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse the close was clearly correct; the arguments for the move were stronger and had 5-2 support. None of the "overturn" arguments here have brought compelling and factually-accurate arguments; the larger participation here is thus not cause to relist. In particular: (a) because the move is moving a DAB page to the previous title, the temporary "broken links" are not an inconvenience; (b) the two-week listing period was sufficient, and longer than most moves; (c) while the "8-digit viewership" argument in the nomination is confusing, it is beyond dispute that the two stations have viewing figures that are comparable in scale; (d) neither the 2011 nor 2017 move requests have compelling arguments against this move; in general the appeals to a prior consensus do not justify a relist. Walsh90210 (talk) 04:39, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It is not he point of move review to relitigate the move, but to determine if the close was correct. So it isn't anyone's job to bring compelling and factually-accurate arguments for or against the move here. Srnec (talk) 20:26, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  At this point, enough people have complained about the outcome that a new discussion appears inevitable, regardless of where consensus is. I see no reason to prevent that discussion. Walsh90210 (talk)

• Overturn/relist (uninvolved). The closure was not wrong at the time (as Extraordinary Writ argues), but that's not the only valid basis for a move review. Equally valid is significant additional information not discussed in the page move discussion. It's clear from the length and substance of the commentary here, that significant information was not discussed in the RM. For example, editors have begun to debate assessments of page views and incoming links. No matter whether you agree any of that information should ultimately change the outcome, a reopened RM the place for it to be discussed. The closer is right that the closure could not have considered arguments that had not yet been made by any editor, but it is wrong not to reopen the discussion now that they are being made. Adumbrativus (talk) 06:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't think page views or incoming links are "significant additional information" as both were readily available during the move request. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 12:58, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse (uninvolved). The closure correctly analyzed the consensus in the discussion; on my read of it, I don't see any strong arguments for the American network retaining its primary topic status. The procedural objections to the move are poorly founded as well. Two weeks is an above-average duration for an RM to be open, and gestures to past discussion results are not especially compelling – particularly since the last RM before this one was seven years ago. Consensus can change, especially over more than half a decade. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 15:20, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (uninvolved). Per the above, I don't see any strong arguments in the original thread for the US channel to retain the primary topic. - SchroCat (talk) 16:44, 8 July 2024 (UTC) (Italic section added at SchroCat (talk) 20:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC))[reply]

  This is move review. It isn't anyone's job to provide such arguments here. If you want to see some, you should probably ask for a relist. Srnec (talk) 20:26, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I’m well aware of what this page is and its purpose, and don’t need the lessons, thanks. I’ve clarified for the hard of understanding. - SchroCat (talk) 20:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse. BD2412 has said it very well: this was a policy-compliant close, and a fair reading of consensus in the discussion. I said very little in my own !vote, because it seemed sufficiently clear where the stronger argument was; I cannot fault the closer for judging likewise. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 21:50, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (uninvolved) this was a move discussion which needed to be closed, was relisted twice, and the arguments against weren't necessarily very strong. I don't see any problem with this at all. SportingFlyer T·C 22:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I will also note given that this seems to have triggered a lot of discussion, starting a new move request immediately may not be a bad idea with the old request as the status quo. SportingFlyer T·C 22:50, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Agreed! Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 10:00, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I would suggest the closer strongly consider this idea as I do think it's consensus of what I've seen here - what happened is endorsed but it is allowed for a new discussion to be immediately be opened. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:08, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  What are you talking about? It wasn't relisted twice and there were no arguments made against it at all in _this_ move request, even though many arguments were made against it in previous requests. Also the request to move only ever appeared on the talk page. This was a "stealth" move. Ergzay (talk) 15:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Banner [12]. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 15:51, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist (uninvolved with the move discussion, although I did express some opinions on the post-close link retargeting). Two reasons I support reilsting. First, when a large number of editors express to the closer that they would've voted had they seen the discussion, reopening is the right thing to do per WP:NOTBUREAU. Second, I'm just not seeing any strong arguments for the move. The nomination is based on data that is both wrong (ABC News Australia doesn't get 8-digit viewership per week) and presented in a misleading manner (comparing weeks to days), there is one "per nom" which is agreeing that a broadcaster with 7.7 million weekly views is on equal footing to one that gets 49 million weekly views, there is one that is just WP:IDONTLIKEIT, one that is anecdotal, and one that is "as above" (which would be valid if any of the above actually had a strong policy-based argument). --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 15:16, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The move was listed correctly and ran for over two weeks (double the advised norm) and included a relist too. The voting was clean and clear and the closer followed practice and policy in doing the close (despite your mischaracterisation of the !votes). How many bites of the cherry do you want to turn this into US.WP, rather than EN.WP? - SchroCat (talk) 15:53, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @SchroCat That's quite a bit of WP:ABF there. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 16:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Not really. Your mischaracterisation of the arguments of other editors, however, isn't exactly a shining beacon good faith, so I wouldn't press the point too far. - SchroCat (talk) 16:33, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @SchroCat The move was not listed correctly. No banner was placed on the top of the page. Ergzay (talk) 15:46, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  There was a banner [13]. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 15:49, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  (edit conflict) Are you sure about that?? I'll repeat: the move was listed correctly. - SchroCat (talk) 15:54, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  7 million daily viewers does not necessarily equate to 49 million weekly viewers. If the same 7 million people watch ABC (US) every night of the week without fail, they only have 7 million weekly viewers. In other words, you cannot compare apples to oranges just by painting the apples orange. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 01:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist or overturn - This move discussion is highly contentius that should be closed by an admin. I believed given the 50/50 chance this should be relisted for the final time. I am uninvolved. Toadette^Edit! 19:15, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (uninvolved). This discussion was open for more than two weeks and projects notified. Closing as move was completely reasonable given the arguments. People are pointing at the nationality of editors and saying it should be relisted on that basis. Seriously? Tom B (talk) 21:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It was also never published with a banner pointing to the discussion on the relevant pages. Ergzay (talk) 15:49, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Banner [14] ~~ Jessintime (talk) 15:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist (uninvolved) - This is a significant move and we can ensure a lot more people are happy with the outcome by giving it some more time and gather more input. -- Netoholic @ 00:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Relist (uninvolved). Yes, the close was fine in a vacuum. But the result is surprising and contested. Per WP:NOTBURO, this is not "you snooze you lose", there was a late surge of supports and it's possible people ignored the request as unlikely to succeed. Just relist it, which should have happened for a close RM anyway as a courtesy rather than going to MR. SnowFire (talk) 00:23, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse (uninvolved): Only because relisting will result in some obvious participation bias. People who oppose the move are much more likely to look at the discussion than people who support the move (because it has already been done). The additional attention at this MRV doesn't help. The only way I would support a relist is if it's done at a global scale so it is not obviously skewed one way. C F A 💬 15:31, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  How is participation bias relevant to policy? The move discussion was never published on the relevant pages as a banner to notify people that it was occurring. Ergzay (talk) 15:48, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Banner [15] ~~ Jessintime (talk) 15:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Relist (uninvolved): Stating my opinion again here as I've just realized that there was never a banner placed on top of the ABC News (now ABC News (United States)) page. That means that editors would have had to manually go on to the talk page to discover that a move discussion was taking place, severely limiting the audience of the discussion. Edit: Apologies I appear to have missed the banner even in the edit log. Ergzay (talk) 15:51, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]